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First Minute of the Snake Saw 731,102 Posts on Sina Weibo

It turns out that in China, both Gregorian New Year and Chinese New Year are celebrated with the same zest and enthusiasm.

What Will the New Year Bring

Indeed, the 731,102 posts sent during the first minute of SnakeYear (I've patented that) just topped the 729,571 posts sent during what we laymen call the first minute of 2013.

Despite the heat it has come under lately over its (fictional) potential decline, Sina Weibo is clearly still a major player in the 7 circles of the internet.

Its current 300 million users will not stop posting their life events and even foreign stars have tried their luck at the great microblogging site, whether it is for marketing purposes of for quirkiness effect.

A Change in the Tide

Today, the service's main challenge is the rising popularity of the instant messaging app WeChat. Tencent's golden goose, this app offers smartphone users different services that revolve around communication.

Although both services differ slightly in nature and goal, the users are changing their internet habits to fit around them.

Explaining Online Habits

Some will claim that posting and following 140 character messages is completely different to writing a message to someone you know. Admittedly this is a good point. However, because internet behaviors are forever changing, trends move toward one or the other. If we calculate popularity by time spent on either app then Sina Weibo does have a case against WeChat arguing people are spending their time communicating with their friends, in group chat session, or even getting to know strangers in the vicinity instead of browsing the posts of people they are following or writing their own haikus.

The Quirks of the Internet

Communication and entertainment are difficult to measure sometimes, especially when it's online. This is only made more complex when different services are constantly updating themselves thus forever altering their base service.

None the less, this is why the internet is such a popular device, and why it has changed our lives and habits. Although there is structure to the platforms we use, nothing is motionless. Keeping up with what's going on is the best part!